I’m going to admit something to you now that I am almost ashamed to put into words. I have purposefully manipulated everyone for the last year. I consciously did something that I knew would achieve a particular result and, as embarrassed as I am to type these words, I admit that I made a plan ahead of time to do something that I knew was a cold, calculated move on my part. I successfully gamed the system and in doing so….
Do I have your attention yet?!
We live in a world of *Gotcha!* headlines and purposefully premeditated story leads that are meant to steal your attention. Most of what you come across these days, either on TV, in print, or especially on the Internet, is designed to stop you dead in your tracks and engineered to compel you to engage that web link, video, social media post, or other piece of content.
Whether it’s “You’re Not Going To Believe What…” or “3 Tips To…”, EVERY single piece of content that goes viral or in some other way garners a ton of attention from the pubic, no matter how niche, is framed in a way that is meant to manipulate you and your attention.
I intentionally decided to write the title of this piece “OK, I QUIT!” and every word of that whole first paragraph of this article to compel you to click that link and begin reading what I have to say… and it makes me sick at my stomach to know that I did that to you.
(The other devious tactic that much of media and society use now to illicit a visceral response from you is hyperbolic emotional reactions. I mean, YouTube is rampant with “reaction videos” where people listen to a song, seemingly for the first time, and mug for the camera in feigned astonishment hoping that you will ape the same reaction and stick around for the duration of the video.)
In the Summer of 2020, I released a brand new cymbal cleaner for my ‘side hustle’ company, Session Ace, called Session Ace SHINE™. At the same time, I put together two different product demo videos for YouTube to show people how to use this cleaner and also to let them hear hear the difference that such a cleaner could make in the sound of a cymbal. Even before I made these videos, I planned this little project as an experiment more than a marketing campaign. I had questions that I needed to get answers for and this seemed like the perfect way to do it.
I released the first video on July 15, 2020 and it was simply called “Zilco Vintage Cymbal Cleaning: BEFORE & AFTER”. The thumbnail was a bit complicated, incorporating a vintage cymbal ad, a clean & shiny new cymbal, shots of the product I was selling, and a couple of lines of copy. It was everything that I have been told a thumbnail should NOT be. The video itself was also 25 MINUTES of me cleaning a cymbal at my kitchen sink.
(25 minutes is the same thing as 4.5 days when it comes to the public’s attention span on the Internet.)
The second video was released on July 18, 2020 and titled “Do Dirty Cymbals Sound Better?”. The thumbnail was a simple picture of a dirty cymbal (purposefully NOT the one I cleaned in the video), and on top of that photo, in BIG blocky letter, I displayed that title along with a smaller subhead of “Before & After” (notice it was not “Before And After”… through I should have tried “Before AND After” on the other video as an extra experiment).
Video #2 was also approximately 15 minutes long.
So, I put those two videos out… and I waited… and waited some more… and then, I decided to wait even more.
Let’s look at the numbers and see what this little experiment reveals:
– Video 1: 232 Views, Zero Comments, 4 Likes (and no “Dislikes”)
– Video 2: 12,684 Views, 76 Comments, 135 Likes (with almost 15 percent of the reactions entered manually by viewers as a “Dislike”)
The difference in the engagement of these two videos is exponential. If you look at some of the other metrics, including how many new subscribers each video triggered, the difference is astonishing.
Oddly enough, the Average View Duration for Video #2 (the more “successful” video) was a little over 4 minutes while the AVD for Video #1 was over 6 minutes! I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Most of the traffic for Video #2 came directly from YouTube’s search feature for the words “How To Clean Cymbals” while most of the people who found Video #1 in YT’s Search were looking for “Zilco Cymbals”.
There are tons more analytics that I could bore you with but almost every metric points to the exact same conclusion: If I want the public, especially new people who don’t regularly follow me, to watch, listen, read, and engage with my content, I have to trick them into doing it.
By the measure of these metrics, the old cliche “Content Is King” has actually been proven wrong… at least partially. What’s really key to the success of any content these days, good or bad, is a person’s (or an organization’s) ability to manipulate the public into consuming it and engaging with it.
(When I say “Good” and “Bad”, I’m talking about quality of the content, slant of the message, production value, et al)
I just want to go on record as saying “I HATE THIS!”. I don’t want to manipulate you into watching, reading, or listening to my stuff. I just want to make quality content that I feel is valuable. I want to put it out into the world and have people who are interested in these topics that I riff on get some real, tangible, actionable value out of it. Plain and simple.
Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. That reality is long dead and, if I’m being honest, probably never really existed in the first place.
So, as someone who is both a professional content creator and an educator, I have 3 choices:
1) Stop making stuff and find something else to do with my time.
2) Continue doing things the way I’ve always done them, reaching fewer and fewer people each year.
3) Change how I do everything, purposefully make “better” content than anything else out there (meaning better at commandeering your attention), and simultaneously become a Jedi-level Master at manipulating people to fully engage with that content.
After mostly sitting on my hands the last few weeks in a COVID bubble, Choice #1 is VERY tempting. I’ve come to enjoy watching TV and sitting on my butt. But, truth be known, I am getting bored more and more by the day with this lifestyle choice.
For me, Choice #2 would just be a frustrating way to live. Making fun, informative, educational, and/or useful content that no one pays attention to is a soul sucking experience.
So, all I am left with is Choice #3. If I am going to achieve my goals for both myself and my content, I am going to have to manipulate you. The numbers don’t lie when it comes to this reality. This is all a game and to be successful at it, the game must be played to win.
(And anyone that knows me really well knows exactly how competitive I am. I do not “play to lose” with anything.)
I want to be very transparent and completely open about what I have learned over the last 18 months and how I am choosing to move forward. I don’t like this but, I am willing to do it because I have a whole lot of very valuable stuff I want to share with you. I just feel this need to tell you all of this ahead of time so that my conscience is completely clear as I turn this corner and move ahead.
Now, I promise to not waste your time or to not give you information (content) that isn’t of the highest quality, either in the composition of the content, the production value of that content, or the usefulness of this content. I value your time and attention as much as I value my own. So, waste is not an option for me.
But, in most cases, I am going to purposefully trick you. I am going to do what is needed to get your attention and the attention of many other people just like you. If time and attention are virtual forms of currency, then that is medium of exchange that I will be working with going forward.
I hope you’re cool with that. I also hope you choose to share all of this stuff with everyone you know who might find it valuable and useful.
All that said, just know that I appreciate you, your time, your attention, and your continued patronage.